I Bite

to accompany you

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It is alone that I come up with these words, alone that I slipped into this world. Alone I will be when the earth folds her damp arms around me one last time. And it is alone, always, that I choose to remain.

I bite.

They say I am selfish, a creature of cold marble and unreachable cliffs. Yet they are the ones with the god complexes, building temples out of my silences, turning my absence into a reflection of themselves. As if I cannot be human without someone carving their name into me. As if my orbit depends on their gravity. I disagree. I have never been a shrine. I am not your baptismal fire. You will not find salvation here.

I bite.

I’ve always feared what happens when someone knows too much. When they trace every freckle, when they memorize the exact temperature of my skin. When they start to name me. So I become smoke. Like the moon, I shift. One night full, the next a slit of silver. I want to be admired but never touched, adored but never followed. Gaze at me — yes — but from a distance.

You call it avoidance. You call it pride. Tell me, why must I unravel for you? Why must I be a project in your hands? It’s always you who wants to orbit me, to study my phases, to pin meaning to every flicker. It’s always you who wants to conquer. But I was never meant to be colonized. I do not need your flag. Look, but do not reach. My craters were not made for your love, my air does not breathe for you. If you try to land here, you will die. You must choose, death or a love that kills.

Still, you try. Still, you dream of soft landings. You ask the Little Prince to teach you how to tame me. Foolish. I never asked to be tamed.

I bite.

My jaw is not a metaphor. My teeth are real. I sink them deep. And when the blood pools, you look at me like I’ve betrayed you. As if your hand wasn’t already under my nose, stroking the wildness, daring it. I am a violent dog, it is no secret, I disobey constantly. You call me rabid now, like your pain erases my own. You tell the world I bite, as if you didn’t press your palm against my muzzle first. As if it wasn’t your hunger that opened my mouth. You never understood what love is to a dog that’s only been leashed. My loyalty is not yours to claim. My fury is not yours to shame.

I bite.

Sometimes I run before you even open your arms. I know what comes next. You’ll want to fix me, trim the storm out of me, peel back the thunder. So I leave — like that first drop of rain on your skin, gentle but prophetic. You don’t see it but I do; the flood is coming.

I come with thunder in my lungs and I never knock. I fall hard. I make rivers out of dust. I interrupt, I drench. I disappear. I am mistaken for cruelty.

But look closer.

I hide tears in downpours. I clean what no one else will. I soften the hard places. I water what the sun forgot. I only arrive where I am needed not where I’m wanted, not where I’m begged for, not where I’m owned. I give until I’m emptied. Then, I dry, that is my nature. That is the malediction of all storms. We love only from a distance, and that love has to leave behind debris.

And yet you curse me. You shelter from me. You speak of me like a disaster.

I was never your destruction. I was your mirror. You were never drowning in me — only in what I revealed.

I bite.

That is all I know how to do. Because maybe I am not the moon, nor the dog, nor the rain. I am what they bloom around, I am the rose They see how I bloom among the wounded. They hear how the bees hum to me and how the wind lingers where I grow and assume I am safe to pluck. Except I do not belong in a vase. I was not grown for possession.

You thought beauty was the same as permission however, I was never yours to hold. Only to witness. Only to smell, once, before moving on.

So I grew thorns.

Because villains have rough hands and heroes have burning ones. Because love has a way of digging and even the gentlest touch can unearth the roots of me.

I bite, out of fear.